


Idle Hands

by pentacs14



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: and everyone loves a bit of snark, because the boys could have so much fun together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 04:14:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/630280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentacs14/pseuds/pentacs14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One does not train and outfit super secret spies then leave them lying around with nothing but time on their hands. Bond is bored and when he's bored he's twice as dangerous. But Q has never run from a spot of danger and he may have an exploding ace or two tucked up his sleeve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Usual disclaimer: Do not own, am not making any profit, etc.
> 
> A bit of larking about with my favorite boys. I loved Skyfall to bits and pieces but Bond and Q did not share enough screen time, in my opinion. So I'm remedying that fact ;-p
> 
> Don't know when or if the muse will strike again on this one. We'll see what the future brings.

Bond stared down at the crossword he'd been nursing for the last three hours wondering how much longer this stalemate could last.

It had been three days since he broke into Mallory's office and put his name back on the active duty roster.

A week since Mallory put him on medical leave and stated quite firmly that if he saw Bond's face before the month was up it would become forced early retirement. 

Fifteen days since he woke up in a hospital in Turkey to Eve's strident voice trying to convince a doctor who couldn't speak English to release Bond into her care through sheer volume alone.

A couple more days and Bond had no doubt he would be clawing up the walls, desperate for some action, but for now he refused to be the first one to give in. He could be stubborn like that.

With the previous M he had known exactly how much he could push before she would snap. Not that that always stopped him but it was nice to know. Mallory was still too new. Bond wasn't sure how idle his threats were yet and that was enough to give him some pause.

Not for much longer though. If the itch got too bad he knew 008 was in town working a domestic job. The man owed Bond a favor for a little dust up in Cambodia a few years back and might let him tag along.

He had been running an op in Laos at the time, though he couldn't recall what it had been for, when his fellow agent's SOS had gone out.

What he did remember was a leggy brunette, who looked good in red and better out of it, that the two of them had holed up with for a few days while waiting for the furor to die down.

So caught up was he in reminiscing (the woman had been close enough to double-jointed as made no difference to him) that an unexpected noise nearly had him jumping out of his skin.

“You have something of mine,” a voice drawled into the silence.

Bond reached for his missing gun, confiscated after he had menaced the third psychologist trying to use him to flesh out a research paper on PTSD, and came up empty.

“I'm sorry?” he finally managed after he had blinked at his unexpected visitor a few times.

It had been a long time since anyone had managed to sneak up on him and the newly minted, still wet-behind-the-ears, computer geek they had for a quartermaster was the last person he had thought capable of such a feat.

The young man, currently leaning nonchalantly in Bond's doorway with his arms crossed over his chest and a smug look on his face, looked for all the world as if he had been there for ages.

“I sincerely doubt that,” Q replied in amusement, “but it's nice to know you care enough to lie.”

“What?” Bond winced at how inane he sounded.

Maybe that medical leave hadn't been such a stupid idea after all. His brain was having trouble shifting into gear.

“I've seen you in action, 007. You've always had a rather...” Q paused significantly, “shall we say 'fluid' concept of other people's property. I would like mine back, if it's all the same to you.”

Bond looked helplessly about the tiny office he had the dubious honor of calling his own. The only things present in it were himself and the desk he was sitting at.

The room was hardly bigger than a broom closet, the walls a stark white and completely bare. There wasn't even a window or poster to break up the tedium. 

The nicest thing that could be said for the desk was that it was functional, unlike the chair that he had at one point contemplated setting on fire because of a particularly annoying squeak.

The move to the new offices had occurred while he was still officially dead and MI6 had never run to sentimentality. They did not hold nice offices with pretty views on the off chance that an agent might come back from the dead to use it.

Not even an agent with such a sterling track record of cheating said death just to piss his superiors off.

Not that he really cared. The double-ohs had always considered their offices a bit of a joke on the part of upper management. 

Ostensibly somewhere to complete post-mission paperwork and deliver inter-office mail to, Bond didn't know a single agent who used their office on a regular basis. Except maybe 004 and that had more to do with her kink for office sex than anything else.

Q pushed away from the door casing and glanced around with a smirk. He only needed to take one step before he was standing directly in front of Bond's desk.

“How very...” he trailed off looking for an appropriate adjective. “Well, I wouldn't call it homey.”

“Stark?” Bond offered. “Austere? Claustrophobic?” He refused to admit that he'd been trolling a thesaurus earlier looking for clues to help solve the crossword now sitting forgotten in front of him.

“I was leaning more towards spartan. Very macho man chic.” Q grinned at Bond's indelicate snort then sobered abruptly. “Now hand it over.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Bond replied, honestly baffled.

He was rough on the stuff Q branch fitted him out with, of that there was no question in anyone's mind. 

The mission to Macau was hardly the first time he'd failed to return some newfangled gadget a quartermaster had admonished him to take care of, and it certainly wasn't going to be the last, but he had never kept anything.

More often than not the things he did return with were either damaged or destroyed beyond repair. The next mission always saw him outfitted with the latest and greatest in research and development anyway. So why waste his time on what amounted to a bunch of broken toys?

“Let me rephrase this in a form that you are no doubt more familiar with,” Q huffed out after indulging in a long-suffering sigh. He held out his hand palm up and twitched his fingers in the universal sign for 'gimme.' “Hand over the pen, Mr. Bond, and nobody gets hurt.” Q was obviously trying for intimidating but he hadn't bothered to alter his posh accent or serene demeanor one jot and it came out utterly ridiculous. 

A startled laugh escaped Bond as he glanced down at the innocuous pen he still held and wondered if all the concussions he'd received over the years were finally starting to catch up to him.

“I stole this pen fair and square,” he defended himself. “Straight from Mallory's office.”

“I know where you got it from,” Q returned irritably. “I also know that M got it off of Eve, who lifted it from Tanner, who borrowed it from Hartmann in purchasing, who scrounged it from that odious little frog Ridley from accounting, who swiped it off my desk while he was complaining that I was over budget. Again. A fact I blame wholly on you, I might add.”

“You have a tracker," Bond marveled slowly, "installed in your pen.”

“How very astute of you.” Q rolled his eyes as Bond completely ignored the more important issue of Q branch funding in lieu of stating the obvious. “You would be surprised the sort of parallels one can draw between the spread of STDs and the path pilfered office supplies take in an agency of this size.”

Q gave Bond an arch look that had the agent nearly spluttering at the implications. Time to ramp up his game.

“Does it explode?” Bond asked sarcastically as he held the pen against his suit jacket to see if the color was compatible.

“If I threaten to detonate it in your trouser pocket will you give it back?”

“Considering how many times I've tried to requisition one? No, I don't believe I shall.”

“Only you would consider attempting to bully the lower level techs into misappropriating supplies from a government facility in order to build you an incendiary on the sly as a form of requisitioning,” Q informed him wearily.

“I didn't bully all of them,” Bond stated defensively. “Some of them I tried to bribe.”

“Yes, I've been meaning to thank you for the cookies I confiscated from Fletcher a while back. Italian?”

“Swiss, actually,” Bond corrected with a grin. “I'd enjoy them while you have the chance. They're harder to get hold of now I've been banned from Zurich.”

Q gave an unconcerned shrug and switched back to the main topic. “Whether or not the pen does or does not in fact explode is immaterial since you would have no way of knowing how to use it.”

“Oh, come now, Q,” Bond scoffed. “I've been around the block once or twice. You bang it around enough or light it on fire and eventually something will spark.”

“Light it on-!” Q echoed in horror. “You utter neanderthal! No, the pen does not explode and I would like it back now. Before you hurt someone. Most likely yourself.”

“Now why do I feel like you're keeping something from me?”

“Because you're a paranoid sociopath with a habitual need to project your own pathological neurosis onto others.” 

“Oh, someone's been a bad boy,” Bond tsked. “Hacking into sealed files and reading personal psych evals? That's not very nice, now is it.”

“One hardly needs the quacks MI6 hires to see that. You parade around the place with your mental and physical scars on display for all to see. It's a wonder you're any good at poker at all. Or are you the type that likes to flash pretty things around in order to distract the other players?”

For a moment all Bond can see is the last poker game he played, Vesper draped over his shoulder, the smell of her perfume lingering in his nose, the heat of her flesh pressed to his side, her breath moist against his ear.

It was a fleeting memory, easily shoved to the back of his mind, but Q's eyes were shrewd and knowing as he leaned over the desk.

“Case in point,” he stated with satisfaction, plucking the pen from Bond's unresisting grasp. “And just for future reference? If you had managed to damage it enough to release the experimental solvent hidden in the secondary chamber it would have not only eaten through your paper but also your desk and possibly the floor. I shudder to think what would have happened if you had attempted to light it on fire.”

The quartermaster turned to go. 

“Oh, by the way,” Q tossed over his shoulder as he paused in the doorway. “The answer to five down is cutthroat. Have a good day, Mr. Bond.”


	2. Chapter 2

The air was cold and crisp, cutting into Bond's lungs with each breath. He hunched his shoulders in an attempt to burrow deeper into his coat.

The temperature was dropping steadily up here on the rooftop but it felt good to be outside and not trapped in the stuffy bowels of MI6.

The sound of the door slamming behind him was whip-crack sharp in the still air but Bond didn't bother turning from his contemplation of the city skyline.

There were few people who knew to look for him up here and none of them would he consider a danger to himself. Dangerous, yes, but not necessarily a danger.

Besides, the staccato sound of each measured step echoing across the rooftop was precise, emphatic and told Bond exactly who was marching up behind him in a fit of pique.

“Yes, Bond,” Q bit out angrily, as if they were continuing an argument interrupted by an ill-timed phone call and not meeting for the first time today. “I do have the 'anal retentive habit,' as you so charmingly put it, of inserting tracking devices into things that I shockingly would like to keep track of. That would include any experimental prototypes I happen to be playing with in my spare time, any personal possessions that I happen to be inordinately fond of, and all the handy little gadgets I allow you double-ohs to borrow from MI6's arsenal. Gadgets you cannot seem to keep track of yourself and therefore manage to leave out in the field for our enemies to pick up and attempt to reverse engineer. So you can see how that habit has come in handy a time or two.”

“I bring some of them back,” Bond offered mildly.

“Mostly as so much useless scrap!” Q seethed. “Which is worse than not bringing them back at all. At least if you lose it in the field there is the slimmest chance that, after your smoke has cleared, my retrieval team can go in and pick up after you like a nanny picking up after a spoilt child.”

“Out of curiosity,” Bond asked placidly, not rising to the bait. “Who did you get to recover the gun from that giant lizard at the casino?”

“Wilson,” Q gritted out from behind clenched teeth. “And for your information he is still having panic attacks.”

“I assumed you would have tried some sort of experimental sedative on it. Something flashy like that.”

“We did. You didn't mention in the debriefing that there were two of them.”

Bond finally turned with a grin to survey a thoroughly pissed off Q. The slight man was currently doing his best to glare holes through him if the heat of his gaze was anything to go by.

The agent in him filed away how carefully Q was holding himself and how he was angled so that he couldn't accidentally glance over the roof's edge. That didn't stop him from continuing to needle his livid quartermaster.

“Must have slipped my mind,” Bond offered offhand. “It's hard to keep track of these things hanging upside down in a dragon pit. You may have to try it some time. If you can be parted from your Earl Grey and pyjamas, that is.”

“I don't know what game you think you are playing at here, Mr. Bond,” Q said with narrow eyes and frost in his voice. “But I want it to stop.”

“I've no idea what you're talking about.” The lie was as blatant as the amusement in his tone.

“I don't give a toss how bored you are, 007,” Q all but hissed, his posh accent slipping. “I want all the stuff you nicked back in my office by the end of the day. And the next time you kidnap one of my employees in an attempt to blackmail me you will find that exploding pen you are so damn fond of jammed in the gear shift of your bloody Aston Martin!”

“I would hardly consider it kidnapping,” Bond called after Q as the irate quartermaster stormed away. “She was more than willing to go!”

Bond settled himself more fully into his jacket as the wind blew bracingly across the rooftop with a smug smile.

Time dragged for agents forced to accept temporary leave and, after Q had invaded his office in search of a pen and handed him his own ass (metaphorically speaking), Bond had been alleviating that boredom by bothering the composed and normally unflappable quartermaster. Mission successful, it seemed.

It had been an amusing diversion to be sure but he had known it was a momentary distraction at best. Bond could feel his palm itching for a gun, his blood humming with the need for action even now.

Taking out his cell he thumbed through the numbers until he came to 008's.

“Bond,” his fellow agent greeted on the second ring. “I'm busy, make it quick.”

“Bill,” he drawled as gunfire sounded in the background. “Need a hand?”

“Still playing desk jockey like a good little boy?”

“Still having trouble retrieving that data from the Germans?”

“Be here in twenty.”

The line went dead and Bond gave a feral grin.

They wouldn't know what hit them.

~00Q~00Q~00Q~

Bond heard later that Moneypenny hadn't been able to stop laughing for close to an hour when the news had hit HQ, but when he strode in she had buzzed him into Mallory's office, prim and proper as ever.

Her dark eyes snapping was the only sign of her suppressed mirth but he swore he could hear her giggling as he shut the door.

Mallory, on the other hand, looked outright frazzled. His suit jacket hung limply off the back of his chair and the sleeves of his shirt showed obvious signs of having been rolled up and back down several times.

“Really, 007?” he asked tiredly. “The gherkin?”

Bond shrugged as he tossed a flash drive on Mallory's already over cluttered desk.

“I didn't damage it too badly,” Bond said unconcerned.

He took the blame not from any sense of loyalty to 008 but because the man had been out of commission, knocked out by a lucky blow from a ham-fisted bruiser, by the time Bond had tracked their targets down to a suite of offices rented from 30 St Mary Axe.

“Not too badly?!” Mallory demanded aghast. “From the M11 it looks like something tried to take a bloody bite out of the damn thing.”

Bond gave another offhand shrug. “The bar is still functioning.”

“The bar...!” Mallory cut himself off with a sound normally only heard in malfunctioning steam engines. He took a deep breath and continued in a carefully controlled tone of voice. “Why couldn't you have chosen some other building to deface? The Lloyd's building, for instance. That thing is a modern eyesore.”

“I'll take that into consideration,” Bond replied flippantly. “For next time.”

“Get out, Bond,” Mallory muttered with his head buried in his hands. “Before I say or do something we will both regret.”

“Certainly.” Bond paused just long enough to be insulting before adding, “Sir.”

Moneypenny was standing, perfectly composed, by her desk with a file brief and one of Q branch's iconic lock boxes when he stepped out.

“The box is thumbprint activated,” she said as she handed everything over. “You can look over the lot on the way.”

“On the way to where precisely?” he asked, more curious than concerned.

“To the airport, of course,” she replied, voice rich with mirth. “You're being shipped out before anyone realizes it was you who broke their pretty little tower.”

“Why do I feel like the trouble child being sent off to boarding school?” Bond drawled.

“You've always been trouble, Bond,” she returned, eyes crinkling in amusement.

“Nice to know my efforts are being appreciated.”

“Would you two kindly stop flirting and get on with it,” Mallory's voice echoed tinnily from Eve's desk.

“Good luck, 007,” Eve said. “Oh, and Q requests you leave as much of that intact as possible when you die. He says he hasn't the funds to build everything your replacement will need from scratch.”

Bond found himself chuckling as he continued down the hallway. Even in his absence the quartermaster found ways to give him cheek.


End file.
